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Victory Garden Visions

By Kerri Conan January 30, 2009 2:21 pmJanuary 30, 2009 2:21 pm

Hard to believe, but even in the crackle of winter, the victory garden is gaining steam. Our hero from this summer, Roger Doiron, who made that nifty video about turning the White House lawn into an organic garden, has just won first place for that idea in a contest sponsored by On Day One, an online suggestion box for the new Obama administration.

This is no small potatoes: On Day One is a project of The Better World Campaign, whose mission is to build a stronger relationship between the United States and the United Nations. Mr. Doiron’s idea was chosen from thousands of entries spread across nine issue categories. And for you on Facebook, here is a petition you can sign.

Kind of on this subject … does anyone grow fruits/vegetables on their windowsill or balcony? what kinds of plants are you preparing to grow right now? I want to get into growing, but I don’t really know what i am doing.

My brother, Monte Sier was nominated two days ago to enter the whitehousefarmer.com contest.

The top three winners with the most votes will have the chance to meet with Barack and discuss the benefits of a white house garden. You can read my brothers bio, from his work in Uganda, to currently teaching high-risk kids in the south side of Chicago, Illinois.

Got to:http://www.whitehousefarmer.com, and click on the state of Illinois to read his qualifications and bio. If you like what you see, please cast your vote for him.

Jon, I did that for a few years. In my opinion the best balcony vegetable plants are from the lettuce, tomato, pepper, and cucumber families. It’s also possible to grow sunflowers as long as you’re not north of the 60th parallel and your balcony gets at least four hours’ direct sunlight. (Sunflowers will twist their heads off north of 60, or at least mine did.)

You need relatively deep pots – 14 to 18 inches for all but cherry tomatoes and certain hot pepper varieties – and you need the right varieties of plant for your climate and for the amount of direct sun your balcony gets on average.

If you grow cucumbers, you should pollinate them yourself (what my mother called “vegetable pimping”) and keep them covered in plastic until the flowers set, because any member of the cucumber family can pollinate any other member, and pollen can travel for miles. This means that pumpkins can pollinate gherkins; the resulting offspring can be entertaining but are not always fit to eat.

Window boxes are best for plants that don’t need deep soil to produce, like herbs, asparagus, and some smaller varieties of peppers. With herbs you have to watch out for varieties that crowd out everything else – mint is notorious for this, as is cilantro. My mother once tried growing cilantro at our old house in Calgary, and thirty-five years later it’s still growing there – in the yard, in the flowerbeds, in the old garden, in the cracks of the garage floor, on the roof….

Charlene, I think you have watched too many 1950’s monster movies. When open pollinated plants are pollinated by another variety, the seed of the cross may not be true to the plant that it grew on, but the fruit will be ordinary. In other words, you would have to save the seeds and plant them to get monsters.

The idea of the modern victory garden is terrific whether on the windowsill, roof, or back or front yard. a food garden can be attractive as well as nourishing.

Years ago, while growing up in Bklyn, in addition to herbs and flowers, we actually planted potatoes on the fire escape. We got what is now referred to as “fingerlings”, and it was a fun thing for three kids to try. My mom always has avocado (pit) trees growing, and we even managed an Ugli once. No fruit, but nice compact tree!

You can check out the local gardening places, there was one highlighted on This Old House this past week-end (from Soho, I think);they install rooftop gardens and would be a great place to start! Good luck, and keep all posted.

I would love to see the victory garden come back – but I’d like even more to see policies set in place that can make sure all Americans have access to good food. I write about this a lot on my blog at http://www.lavidalocavore.org